Impact

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Poverty is both a cause and an effect of insufficient access to, or completion of, a quality education.

Addressing Poverty Through Strong Schools and Strong Communities: A Service Learning Approach

A Collaboration between the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Griffin Campus, the College of Education, and the Griffin-Spalding County School System, Cowan Road Middle School

Can a K-12, service-learning approach that uses issues of poverty as the driving force behind what and how students learn improve their academic achievement, civic dispositions, and contribute to the reduction of poverty?

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Service-Learning Projects

6th Grade: Financial Literacy

7th Grade: Pre-K, Kindergarten Literacy

8th Grade: Health Impacts of Poverty

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Outgrowth of Project

Community Poverty Simulation

New research projects

Math for parents

Partners for a Prosperous Griffin-Spalding County

Strengthening Our Communities

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Beginning Question

What key issue must be addressed in order to solve the problem of poverty in Griffin-Spalding County?

Issue Areas

• FAMILY
• CRIME
• HOUSING
• HEALTH
• EDUCATION
• TRANSPORTATION
• LIFE SKILLS
• ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
• CHILD AND YOUTH SERVICES
• COMMUNITY MINDSET

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Partners for a Prosperous Griffin-Spalding County

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Creating an Action Agenda for Our Future

Partners for a Prosperous Griffin-Spalding County spent over a year focusing on issues.

• Education
• Single Mother Births
• Housing
• Economic Development
• Health
• Transportation

33 Recommendations for Action were developed

Recommendations for Action

Four major action items:

1. Establish a Community Resource Center
2. Obtain major funding for capacity building
3. Develop a Community Foundation
4. Continue a Community Conversation

A Community Conversation

1. We think education is important—do you? If you do, what can we do to continue to improve the education of our children as well as adults?
2. We think having a house and contributing to your neighborhood is important—do you? If you do, how can we help you in your neighborhood?
3. We think being from a dual-parent home is important—do you? If you do, what can we all do to reduce single-parent births?

Strengthening Communities Grant

A federal initiative

• American Recovery & Reinvestment Act
• U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services
• Administration for Children & Families

34 awards nationwide

• $1,000,000 over two years
• Oct 1, 2009 – Sept 30, 2011
• $341,600 local match
• $600,000 toward sub-awards

Purpose

To build the capacity of grassroots nonprofit organizations to address economic recovery issues present in their communities

“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968

The Poverty and the Economy Faculty Research Grants Program Return on Investment

The Investment

Jeff Jordan, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Georgia-Griffin Campus, received two Poverty and the Economy Faculty Research Grants:

• $21,857 in 2006 for his research entitled Addressing Poverty through Strong Schools and Strong Communities: A Service-Learning Approach, and
• $19,321 in 2008 for his second proposal entitled Why Do Dropouts Happen? Exploring Education, Homeownership and Poverty.

This represents a total investment of $41,178.

Return on the Investment

Griffin-Spalding County started an anti-poverty initiative.

• First grant led to creation of the Partners for a Prosperous Griffin Spalding (PPGS).
• Eight local entities formed a collaborative process to address poverty:
  • University of Georgia-Griffin Campus,
  • Spalding County Collaborative Authority for Families and Children, of the City of Griffin,
  • Spalding County,
  • the Griffin-Spalding Chamber of Commerce,
  • the Griffin-Spalding School System,
  • Griffin Technical College, and
  • the Spalding Regional Medical Center.
• Jordan is co-director of PPGS.
• Second grant supported the work of the PPGS education committee.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded the community $1 million dollars to further work started by both of Jordan’s Poverty and the Economy Grants.

• Jordan was instrumental in receiving a HHS grant for $1 million to help fund the Partners for a Prosperous Griffin Spalding. The grant — part of the Strengthening Communities Fund (SCF), created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — aims to improve the ability of nonprofit organizations to promote the economic recovery of people with low incomes.
• Jordan cites UGA’s Initiative on Poverty and the Economy, specifically the Poverty and the Economy Grants Program supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research, as the catalyst for the community’s success in obtaining this grant.

Work Program

The $1 million Strengthening Communities Fund from HHS will be used by PPGS to do the following:

Encourage economic development and relieve poverty in Region 4

• Georgia’s Region 4 (R4) — comprised of Carroll, Coweta, Heard, Troup, Meriwether, Pike, Spalding, Butts, Lamar, and Upson Counties — is currently, and historically, a distressed community when compared to state and national rates of poverty, unemployment, and educational attainment.
• Closings of area textile mills have exacerbated economic distress in the region.

Increase capacity of non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Region 4.

• Operational capacity of local NPOs will be enhanced through assessment, planning, implementation, training, one-on-one technical assistance, funding, and mentoring.
• 60 NPOs will participate in a series of 20 capacity-building workshops over 24 months.
• Through a competitive process, the PPGS will select 40 NPOs for the one-on-one technical assistance and financial sub-awards of $15,000 each on a tier-level based on performance outcomes designed to further strengthen and expand their organizational capacity.

Create a Community Resource Center (CRC) to provide long-term support for local NPOs.

• A CRC will provide office space for participating NPOs.
• The CRC will offer a one-stop option to access services provided by NPOs.
• The CRC will contribute to the sustainability of NPOs by providing facilities andpotential cost-sharing of other operating expenses.